Plan B Games | Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2 to 4 Players | 30 to 45 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra | The Gaming CircusHave you ever dreamed of creating beautiful stained glass windows? After 3 games (a 4 player and two 2 players), I have to say that I enjoyed this version of Azul a lot more than the original. That said, I recommend first-time players start with the original game before diving into the sequel, just for the sake of getting comfortable with the core system.

For me, there is a certain elegance about the original game that gets lost in the machinations of moving tiles here and there in this version. For me the simplicity and and elegance of the original, beat out the newer choices and extended game play, but both are worthy games that should be on the shelves of folks who like lighter strategy games that allow for as much interaction with the other players at the table as they want to allow. In a game of Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, players take turns drafting glass panes from suppliers to place and glaze the palace windows. This creates an interesting dynamic where you want to complete (and score) as many windows as quickly as possible, but also complete windows on the right first since they’ll score you extra points every time you complete a window to their left. The Pattern Strip now scores the points beneath it together with the points beneath any other completed Pattern Strip (identified by a Pane Piece on one of the positions) to the right of the one being scored.After furnishing the Palace of Evora, King Manuel I now seeks to commission the World’s greatest stained glass artisans to adorn the Chapel windows of the Palace of Sintra. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Unlike many remakes, which just add glut to a game that was already fine without it, this new Azul game is equally, but differently good. In fact apart from the exclamations of surprise when another player takes the very pieces you were thinking of picking up, an uncanny number of my games play in near silence. Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra challenges players to carefully select glass panes to complete their windows while being careful not to damage or waste supplies in the process. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

We’ve kept the same drafting mechanism and placement mechanism that was so beautifully integrated in Azul. Every time a window is finished (each one can be finished twice), you score points for it and every completed window to the right of it. You need to pass, and you need to have others need those pieces or have planned worse than you and have to take those pieces. Designed by the world famous, award winning game author Michael Kiesling, Azul captures the beautiful aesthetics of Moorish art in a contemporary board game.

The game was abstract enough that my mom could join in and not roll her eyes/get bogged down by the minutiae of factions and backstories, simple enough that everyone could understand how to play and, more importantly, how to play well within a few minutes. Other times you may want to because it will force your opponent to draft something that they may not want, like when they rested right before you and they must draft Panes.

One player takes control of the scoreboard and puts a marker in each player colour on the zero of the scoring track (to record victory points) and on the zero of the broken glass track (to record negative points). In this version, players can expect to discover new artwork and components, including translucent window pane pieces, a tower to hold discarded glass panes, and double-sided player boards, and many other new additions. At the end of the game you will lose points based on how far down that track you go, from 0 to -18 points.